Since my folders already group messages by subject or origin/sender, most of my folder searches are 'blind'.

Greenman, it appears that your suggestion about posting to the PM Suggestions forum, is the next best step that might result in a solution.

When I search one or more folders for specific word(s) or phrase(s), I find that I occasionally get "false positives"--messages that do not contain the search string in the message body. In nearly all cases these "false positives" are messages that have attachments. I've also noticed that this seems more prone to occur when the search string is fairly short--say fewer than six characters. Is it possible that the search finds random occurrences of the search string in the part of the message containing the encoded binary attachment and considers these successful 'finds'? If so, is there a way to prevent the search of message attachments?

Jim Wolfe

I'll be interested in other comments about this but I believe your assumption is correct that the search finds the occurrence somewhere in the HTML or encoded content.  I don't know of a workaround.

[quote user="Jim Wolfe"]

When I search one or more folders for specific word(s) or phrase(s), I find that I occasionally get "false positives"--messages that do not contain the search string in the message body. In nearly all cases these "false positives" are messages that have attachments. I've also noticed that this seems more prone to occur when the search string is fairly short--say fewer than six characters. Is it possible that the search finds random occurrences of the search string in the part of the message containing the encoded binary attachment and considers these successful 'finds'? If so, is there a way to prevent the search of message attachments?

Jim Wolfe

[/quote]

One way to check would be to open the Raw View tab and CTRL+F and enter your search term to see if it is contained within the MIME encoding.

Thanks for the suggestion, Greenman.

 I ran a folder search using search terms "oak" and "tree". For the resulting "hits" that had attachments, I verified that neither search term was contained in the message body. Then I did a 'Ctrl-F' search on the raw view of a number of these messages with attachments. In each case, I encountered multiple "hits" in the MIME encoded part of the messages. This seems to confirm my original suspicion about what is causing my "false positives" during folder searches.

It would certainly be very helpful if there were a way to confine the folder search to only the bodies of the messages in the specified folder(s).

Well, you can usually tell if a message is relevant from the sender/subject. But, it will be a problem if you are doing a 'blind' search.

I'm sure this can be rectified as MIME encoded sections of mail messages are preceded by character/content type identifiers. Perhaps you can add it to the Pegasus Mail Suggestions forum (if it is not already present).